The DNA of the Service Desk

The DNA of the Service Desk

From Customers to Strategy

Service Desk Strategy & Management :

Most internal IT organization will see an increase in IT spend in 2014. But internally and
externally-facing service desks won't necessarily get increased and investment despite
recognition of the growing importance of customer experience.

62% of IT leaders to expected to see an increase in their budget in 2014.

63% of companies expect to spend significantly more or somewhat more on customer
experience in 2014. But how much of this will reach the IT department?

Service Desk People :

The service desk is about people helping people, but the softer skills required of service desk
agents can be difficult to obtain due to the low compensation rates of service desk staff.

US-based tier 1 IT service desk agents earn between $32k and $43k per annum.

Business believe that help desk / technical support is the third most critical IT role to enabling success in their organization.

Response Rate :

Service desks are rated on performance metrics, but the metrics often relate to what the service
desk agents do rather than how well they are doing it. As with other IT metrics, service desk
performance should be ultimately measured by the success of the business, not the IT
department.

The industry average service desk throughput rate of 8-10 incidents per hour means little if the
customer isn't being helped.

However, the incident first call resolution rate is 74% on average, suggesting that service desk
agents are getting it right.

Incident Profile:

Having a high volume of incidents is not a good thing, but having a low volume is not
necessarily good, either. Customers could be bypassing the service desk due to previous poor
experiences. But how many of incidents could be removed through better training and
communications, automation and self-service?

Industry analysts state that at least 20% of incidents are password resets. In some cases this is
as high as 50%. Why not use automation to ease the service desk burden?

Problem management is an underused ITSM process that --- along with high-quality training ---
can reduce certain incidents significantly.

Support Operations :

Service desk operations have evolved significantly in the recent years through the use of remote
support, self-service portals, and automation to both reduce support costs and improve service
experience.

67% of consumers use web self-service knowledge to find answer to their questions.

The use of remote support tools can not only save costs, it can also provide a better user experience and reduce the time to resolution.

Technology used :

Service desk technology is intended to improve service desk agent productivity and the service
experience, but many agents are still working with inadequate tools that are unfit for service
desk tasks.

42% of service agents are unable to efficiently resolve customer issues due to disconnected
systems, archaic user interfaces and multiple applications.

26% of an agent's time is spent looking for information across different systems.

Support Access :

Customers expect to be able to contact and receive communications from service desk in a
variety of ways, including channels that go beyond telephone and email.

Voice is still the primary communication channel used but is quickly followed by self-service
channels, chat and email.

79% of customers love live chat because it helps them get their questions answered quicker.

Customer Service :

Service desks deliver a service to customers, but how often do the agents think about their
customer service? Consumerization is raising customer support and service expectations, but
are corporate service desks keeping up?

60% of people cite "dealing with unfriendly or impolite" technicians as their top service desk
frustration.

Service desks need to ensure that customer satisfaction surveys aren't just an exercise in
statistics. Feedback collected from said surveys needs to be acted upon.